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OK, you wonder what I mean by big is bad? I’ll start by telling you that it isn’t a moral judgment. It is a logical conclusion drawn from observing economic and social — especially governmental — reality. Big is bad describes what happens when an entity grows too large. Let me illustrate.

The American auto industry — its management and its unions — grew rapidly after WWII. The companies and the unions became behemoths. The survivors destroyed their American competitors and then GM and Chrysler destroyed themselves. Big is bad.

Former President Jimmy Carter presided over the passage of the misguided Community Reinvestment Act1. This act made owning a home contingent upon the largesse of the government and the granting of immunity from risk to mortgage lenders. The financial stability of the buyers became an afterthought.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac grew like an unchecked cancer, became bloated behemoths, and destroyed themselves and the equity of millions of Americans. Big is bad.

Wall Street was once the investment capital of the world. Today, it’s the bailout capital of the world. In 1999, the U.S. Congress — with its perennial lack of foresight and wisdom — repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. They replaced it with the Gramm Leach Bliley Act, which changed the law to allow banks, insurance companies, and investment firms to mix and match the services they provided to their customers2. Wall Street firms like Lehman Brothers, insurance companies like AIG, banks like Wachovia, and hundreds of lesser-knowns became behemoths — "too big to fail" said the dolts in D.C. They failed anyway, and damaged the personal economies of all 303 million Americans in the process. Big is bad.

The 50 United States — 13 originally — are the founders and owners of the government in Washington D.C. They established the federal government to serve “We the People…” and to protect our rights from those who would ignore or abuse them. The role of the federal government is not to provide for us or to replace our personal decision making with imperial fiats. However, in the past few decades, the federal government has become the behemoth of the behemoths. It has ballooned into a giant Pillsbury Dough Boy that usurps many of the rights of the 50 united states and of “We the People…,”not to mention a boatload of our money.

The federal government consumes or controls over one-half of the American economy directly and affects almost every aspect of the economic life of every individual and business in the country. The federal government’s financial house is a complete disaster, with deficits running in the trillions — that’s thousands times billions. Unregulated czars and anonymous bureaucrats are adding hundreds of billions more to the expenses of American businesses and families. The Congress is corrupt beyond measure. Lobbyists like AARP win favors for the few at the expense of — you guessed it — “We the People…” Especially we the older people. Big is bad.

Finally, there’s the Federal Reserve Bank, which, by the way, is not a part of the federal government, has no reserves at all, and is not a bank3. The Fed is a private enterprise. It controls the currency of the United States of America. The Fed is not accountable to anyone, least of all to “We the People…” In other words, their own interests motivate The Fed’s owners. The Fed gets to print as much of our money as it — not the government or “We the People…” — wants and manipulate the economy at its whim. No comment is necessary. Big is bad.

Eurekenomics™ is a personal economic model based on principles and practices that are embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, as interpreted by the founders, and treasured works like Ben Franklin’s "The Way to Wealth."4 It allows individual Americans and their families to escape "big" or to at least insulate themselves from the impact it has on their everyday lives by employing the power, versatility and flexibility of participating whole life insurance. Those who suggest otherwise either have their own ax to grind or have an incomplete understanding of how life insurance contracts are structured.

1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Community_Development_Act2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act3Get a full PhD in the FED in 42 minutes at http://video.google.com/videoplaydocid=6507136891691870450#4https://www.createspace.com/3434860

About the Author

Jeffrey Reeves MA, EUREKONOMIST™ has spent almost forty years helping Americans who are trapped in the dysfunctional financial model that incessantly chants the mantra: “You can have everything you need and anything you want as long as you have enough credit!” You can have the sixty inch fl... More